Bob Newhart to Bring Pasadena His Brand of Dry Humor
The button-down mind still doing stand-up
 |
Despite the continual desire to perform, Newhart admits it's not as easy as it once was.
"The shows themselves aren't tough, but the traveling is," Newhart said from his Los Angeles home. "I still do around 25 shows a year and that's plenty for me now. I really don't enjoy fighting the airport security lines any more."
Bob suspected he lacked the temperament to be a career accountant back in the mid-1950s when his attitude towards taxation arithmetic could be summed up in three words: "That's close enough!" So he and a friend began writing humorous routines based on telephone conversations which they sold to radio stations.
Newhart eventually dropped the partner, but kept the telephone in his act. His one-sided phone conversations have remained throughout his radio, recording, television and stand-up career, and are as much his trademark as his deadpan delivery and slightly forced stammer.
Why keep the stammer all through his career? "That stammer has gotten me a home in Beverly Hills," said Newhart. "I'm not about to drop it now!"
Newhart stormed on to the comedy scene in the 1960s with what would become the best-selling comedy album in history, "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart." The record inspired new comedians for decades with its now classic routines, including one of Newhart's favorites, "Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue," in which he portrays a slick publicist trying to convince the president how to boost his public image.
Newhart wrote the routine in Chicago when Bill Daily asked the unknown, local comedian to come up with a piece about press agents. Known for his sidekick role in the 60s sitcom "I Dream of Jeannie," Daily went on to star with Newhart and the late actress Suzanne Pleshette for five seasons of "The Bob Newhart Show," a decade later.
 |
Comedian Elayne Boosler came away with the same impression when she first met Newhart after a show in Las Vegas in the late 90s. "There's absolutely no change in him on stage and off," said Boosler in a telephone interview.
At a time when in-your-face, crude comedy is now everywhere, it's tempting to suggest Newhart's gentler style of humor is obsolete. But Boosler doesn't think so.
"That would be like saying Mozart is outdated," she says. "Classics survive. When something has a solid foundation and is so unique and perfect, I don't think it can ever be outdated. And when you're the best at something, it just doesn't go out of style."
Bob Newhart makes no apologies for his clean humor, although he says he can still appreciate more bawdy and abrasive comedians. "I was a huge fan of Richard Pryor even though we worked very differently," said Newhart. "I even know most of the words he used! So it's just my choice to work the way I do."
Typical of the clever, Newhart wit is his distinction between a psychologist and a psychiatrist. "A psychologist would be seeing a guy who won't get on a plane," explains Newhart. "A psychiatrist would be treating the guy who wants to blow it up!"
The list of professional comedians who count themselves as Newhart fans is a long one and includes Conan O'Brien, Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen DeGeneres, Ray Romano, Don Rickles, Tim Conway, Dom DeLuise, and Carol Burnett. "He's as nice as he is funny," said Burnett in an email message.
Dom DeLuise recalls working with Newhart in 1964 on the long forgotten CBS variety show, "The Entertainers."
"I was unknown at the time and it was my first show," said DeLuise by phone. "Bob would do his telephone sketches and create magical little stories that were hysterical." (Picture a security guard - his first night on the job and alone in the Empire State Building - calling his boss for instructions to handle King Kong climbing up the building!)
"He'd hit a bull's-eye every time," said DeLuise.
DeLuise was one of the millions of viewers who remembers watching one of television's classic moments in 1990 when the final episode of "Newhart," Bob's second TV series set in a Vermont inn, aired.
"Bob woke up from a dream on the set of the original 'Bob Newhart Show' with his wife Suzanne Pleshette in bed next to him," recalled DeLuise. "The entire second series had been a dream! That was just brilliant."
It's a moment cherished in television history and which Entertainment Weekly Magazine placed atop its "Best All-Time Episodes" list - the type of comic twist that only the button-down mind of Bob Newhart could deliver. But perhaps the late comedian Ed Wynn said it best: "A comic says funny things; a comedian says things funny." Clearly, Bob Newhart is a master of both.